The point is that 'pound' is a unit of weight, while 'stone' might be a unit of weight or mass -- nobody seems quite sure. So saying that you are "10 stone 8 pounds" could be as bizarre as saying you're "5 years and sixpence" old.

Obviously the real answer is that whoever wrote the old legislation that defines stones as "weight or mass" was not a physicist, and did not realise that weight and mass are quite different things.

The distinction between weight and mass is unimportant. People using stone use them as a measure of weight. If I'm in conversation about my weight with my doctor and he says "What do you weigh?" I say "12 stone 7 pounds", and he'll write that down. If he says "How old are you?" and I say "27 years and sixpence" he's going to look at me like I'm an idiot.

There are 14 pounds in a stone. Type 'stone' into google and it will tell you the equivalent value in kilos. Why is this so hard?

I'm on a one-man quest to re-establish old units. I've started giving distances in furlongs and chains (do NOT ask me for directions) and weights in hundredweight. I'd like to order beer by the firkin, but I don't think I could drink that much.

What I love is that people have this funny way where, when they do use leagues, rods, cubits, they always seem to think that they are talking about something quite large, when most are easily measured.

I'm most amused by the song "Bushel and a peck", which hipsters have fallen back in love with. Here's my alternate lyrics :

As much as I like them, I do agree that it's flawed because it's not base 10. I'd actually say stone is more flawed than the rest of the imperial units because those are at least based around numbers that are quite easily divisible, if not easily multiplyable(?). For example 12 and 16 both have a few useful divisors whereas 14 (for pounds in a stone) only has 7 and 2 as its divisors.

The point about not knowing what 17x14 is doesn't really matter but comes about because it's not a system you're used to. As someone who uses stone regularly, I don't multiply by 14 to get the value in pounds because the value in pounds is irrelevant to me. I don't know how to describe it. With kilos, if someone says something is one and a half tons do you multiply by 1000 and then think "Wow! 1500 kilos?! that's a lot!" or is it enough for you that one and a half tons is a lot? It's the same for stone with us. If someone says "The fat guy there weighs 70 stone!" we don't get out our calculators and multiply by 14 and then go "Gosh, that's a lot!" we just know because we're familiar with stones around how much that is.

Well that's your prerogative. I will never be convinced that saying "I weigh 175 pounds" is easier than saying "I weigh 14 stone 7" because just as you can't picture what 14 stone is, I can't picture what 175 pounds is. 175 pounds means nothing to me because I don't use those units on a daily basis. To even estimate it I'd have to first convert it to either stone or kilos (which, for some reason I can work with...) but 14 stone 7 means something because I can compare it to, for example, my own weight of 12 1/2 stone, the weight of someone who is overweight (around 16 - 20 stone depending on build and height), the weight of a regular 9 year old child (about 5 - 6 stone)... and so on.

Historically of course, 1 foot was the length of King Henry VIII's right foot. A yard was the length of his stride. A stone was of course the mass of his royal lineage-laden right testicle...the king's stone. (He was a big bloke).

America was its own nation decades before spelling in English became widely standardized, and the rules implemented in the 19th century reflect two distinct efforts in different places by different people. Get ye downe off this haigh hors o'yourn!

You can't get us to standardize on your low-caliber spelling. Every fiber of my being will fight against this flavor of English language. I've analyzed your dialog and discovered that pretty soon you'll have us changing everything in our language -- calling that thing in the back of the car a 'boot' and the sound I made when I read your comment a 'kerfuffle'. It simply does not behoove us to adopt your system.

Kilograms are not a measure of weight, they are a measure of mass. The metric system's unit of weight is the Newton, found by multiplying the mass by the gravitational acceleration (Newtons=Kg*9.8m/s²).

Absolutely everyone in Amsterdam will understand what a "quarter pounder" is, and know how to pronounce it. In Belgium, a significant number of potential customers would find "quarter pounder" a meaningless tongue twister.

I actually don't know a single Flemish (Dutch speaking) Belgian who doesn't speak English, even my grandmother does. However many of the Walloon side (French speaking) Belgians I have to deal with don't speak a word of it. Yet if it was done for the french speaking part, why isn't it a Fromage Royale? ;-)

The opposite, really. Both the British and US imperial measurements are based around units that were readily available and easily estimable: 3 feet is about your arm span, a foot is approximately the length of your wrist to your elbow, an inch is about the size of your thumb's last joint, and so on.

True, and that's useful, no denying that. But, I was comparing U.S. customary to the S.I. system, where converting measurements of the same unit simply involves moving a decimal place however many spaces in the number (e.g. meter=1000kilometers). In U.S. customary, converting from inches to miles would involve multiplying by 12, then 5280, which frustrates me. Now, maybe arbitrary wasn't the right word to use, but that's what I meant by it.

I can't argue there. Converting between units is undeniably easier in metric. My point really was just that imperial units did come about for sensible reasons, although I realise you were being fecetious when you implied they'd intentionally made everything difficult ;)